The Environmental Impacts Connected with Travelling to events: the Case Study of the City of Naples in Italy

The administrative policies applied in the last years in the city of Naples (South of Italy) have had the objective of increasing the number of cultural activities and events. The closure to the traffic of the Caracciolo promenade, one of the most famous and panoramic streets of the city, made possible the organization of some festivals in this area, with subsequent impacts on congestion and livability of the nearby boroughs. In 2018, 13 festivals were organized in the same area, during a period of 50 days, and more than 2 million visitors participated. The accessibility to the area with public transport, today very constrained, will increase in the coming years due to the opening of a new underground station (Chiaia station) of the metro Line 6. The objectives of this study are: (i) to evaluate the environmental impacts (in terms of CO2 and PM10 emissions) produced by visitors attending the festivals organized in the area of Caracciolo promenade, (ii) to estimate the emissions variations following the opening of the new station of metro Line 6. To this aim, a mobility survey was carried out during the period of one of the most important festival held in 2018, the Buffalo Festival. Assuming that the mobility choices of the visitors to the Buffalo festival are comparable to the mobility choices of visitors for all the other festivals in 2018, it was estimated the total emission produced in 2018 by visitors who went to the festivals organized along the Caracciolo promenade. It was thus possible to estimate that in 2018, during the 50 days in which the festivals took place, 408 tons of CO2 and 793 kg of PM10 pollutants were produced due to visitors' travels. Moreover from the surveys, it was estimated that 39% of users, choosing car or motorbike, declared that they would have used the metro if it had been opened. The opening of the metro station can reduce these emissions up to 48%. By applying the national and European guidelines, it was possible to estimate the economic benefits produced by this reduction. Specifically, the total economic benefits for the events in 2018 was over 583 thousand Euros.